Kosovo - the field of blackbirds - a contemporary
painting by Zorka Perovic

In the thousand year long-history of Serbs, Kosovo and Metohia were
for many centuries the state center and chief religious stronghold,
the heartland of their culture and springwell of its historical traditions.
For a people who lived longer under foreign rule than in their own state,
Kosovo and Metohia are the foundations on which national and state identity
were preserved in times of tribulation and founded in times of freedom
.

The Serbian national ideology which emerged out of Kosovo's tribulations
and Kosovo's suffering (wherein the 1389 St. Vitus Day Battle in Kosovo
polje occupies the central place), are the pillars of that grand edifice
that constitutes the Serbian national pantheon. When it is said that
without Kosovo there can be no Serbia or Serbian nation, it's not only
the revived 19th century national romanticism: that implies more than
just the territory which is covered with telling monuments of its culture
and civilization, more than just a feeling of hard won national and
state independence: Kosovo and Metohia are considered the key to the
identity of the Serbs. It is no wonder, then, that the many turning-points
in Serbian history took place in the and around Kosovo and Metohia.
When the Serbs on other Balkan lands fought to preserve their religious
freedoms and national rights, their banners bore as their beacon the
Kosovo idea embodied in the Kosovo covenant which was woven into folk
legend and upheld in uprisings against alien domination. The Kosovo
covenant - the choice of freedom in the celestial empire instead of
humiliation and slavery in the temporal world - although irrational
as a collective consciousness, is still the one permanent connective
tissue that imbues the Serbs with the feeling of national entity and
lends meaning to its join efforts.1

2
The Survey covers the time between the establishment of the first Serbian
medieval state in the region of today's Kosovo and Metohia until 1989
and Milosevic's rising to power.

Kosovo and Metohia, land lying in the heart of the Balkans where viutal
trade routes had crossed since ancient times, was settled by Slav tribes
between the 7th and 10th centuries. The Serbian medieval state, which
under the Nemanjic dynasty (12th to 14th century) grew into a major
power in the Balkan peninsula, developed in the nearby mountain regions,
in Raska (with Bosnia) and in Duklja (later Zeta and then Montenegro).
The center of the Nemanjic slate moved to Kosovo and Metohia after the
fall of Constantinople (1204). At its peak, in the early the 14th century,
these lands were the richest and the most densely populated areas, as
well as state and its cultural and administrative centers.1
In his wars with Byzantium, Stefan Nemanja conquered various parts of
what is today Kosovo, and his successors, Stefan the First Crown (became
king in 1217), expanded his state by including Prizren. The entire Kosovo
and Metohia region became a permanent part of the Serbian state by the
beginning of the 13th century. Soon after becoming autocephalous (1219),
the Serbian Orthodox Church moved its seat to Metohia. The heirs of
the first archbishop Saint Sava (prince Rastko Nemanjic) built several
additional temples around the Church of the Holy Apostles, lying the
ground for what was to become the Patriarchate of Pec. The founding
of a separate bishophoric (1220) near Pec was indicative of the region's
political importance growing along with religious influence. With the
proclamation of the empire, the patriarchal throne was permanently established
at the Pec monastery in 1346. Serbia's rulers alotted the fertile valleys
between Pec, Prizren, Mitrovica and Pristina and nearby areas to churches
and monasteries, and the whole region eventually acquired the name Metohia,
from the Greek metoch which mean an estate owned by the church.

Studded
with more churches and monasteries than any other Serbian land, Kosovo
and Metohia became the spiritual nucleus of Serbs. Lying at the crossroads
of the main Balkan routes connecting the surrounding Serbian lands of
Raska, Bosnia, Zeta and the Scutari littoral with the Macedonia and
the Morava region, Kosovo and Metohia were, geographically speaking,
the ideal place for a state and cultural center. Girfled by mountain
gorges and comparatively safe from outside attacks, Kosovo and Metohia
were not chosen by chance as the site for building religious centers,
church mausoleums and palaces. The rich holdings of Decant monastery
provided and economic underpinning for the wealth of spiritual activities
in the area. Learned monks and religious dignitaries assembled in large
monastic communities (which were well provided for by the rich feudal
holdings), strongly influenced the spiritual shaping of the nation,
especially in strengthening local cults and fostering the Orthodox doctrine.

In
the monasteries of Metohia and Kosovo, old theological and literary
writings were transcribed and new ones penned, including the lives of
local saints, from ordinary monks and priors to the archbishops and
rulers of the house of Nemanjic. The libraries and scriptoria were stocked
with the best liturgical and theoretical writings from all over Byzantine
commonwealth, especially with various codes from the monasteries of
Mounth Athos with which close ties were established. The architecture
of the churches and monasteries developed and the artistic value of
their frescoes increased as Serbian medieval culture flourished, and
by the end of the 13th century new ideas applied in architecture and
in the technique of fresco painting surpassed the traditional Byzantine
models. With time, especially in centuries to come, the people came
to believe that Kosovo was the center of Serbian Orthodoxy and the most
resistant stronghold of the Serbian nation.2

The
most important buildings to be endowed by the last Nemanjices were erected
in Kosovo and Metohia, where their courts which became their capitals
were situated. From King Milutin to emperor Uros, court life evolved
in the royal residences in southern Kosovo and Prizren. There rulers
summoned the landed gentry, received foreign legates and issued charters.
The court of Svrcin stood on the banks of Lake Sazlia, and it was there
that Stefan Dusan was crowned king in 1331. On the opposite side was
the palace in Pauni, where King Milutin often dwelled. The court in
Nerodimlje was the favourite residence of King Stefan Decanski, and
it was at the palace in Stimlje that emperor Uros issued his charters.
Oral tradition, especially epic poems, usually mention Prizren as emperor
Dusan's capital, for he frequently sojourned there when he was still
king.3

Among
dozens of churches and monasteries erected in medieval Kosovo and Metohia
by rulers, ecclesiastical dignitaries and the local nobility, Decani
outside of Pec, built by Stefan Uros III Decanski, stands out for its
monumental size and artistic beauty. King Milutin left behind the largest
number of endowments in Kosovo, one of the finest of which is Gracanica
monastery (1321) near Pristina, certainly the most beautiful medieval
monument in the Balkans. The monasteries of Banjska dear Zvecan (early
14th century) and Our Lady of Ljeviska in Prizren (1307), although devastated
during Ottoman rule, are eloquent examples of the wealth and power of
the Serbian state at the start of the 14th century. Also of artistic
importance is the complex of churches in Juxtaposition to the Patriarchate
of Pec. The biggest of the royal endowments, the Church of the Holy
Archangels near Prizren, erected by Tsar Stefan Dusan in the Bistrica
River Canyon, was destroyed in the 16th century.4

Founding
chapter whereby Serbian rulers granted large estates to monasteries
offer a reliable demographic picture of the area. Fertile plains were
largely owned by the large monasteries, from Chilandar in Mount Athos
to Decant in Metohia. The data given in the charters show that during
the period of the political rise of Serbian state, the population gradually
moved from the mountain plateau in the west and north southward to the
fertile valleys of Metohia and Kosovo. The census of monastic estates
evince both a rise in the population and appreciable economic progress.
The estates of the Banjska monastery numbered 83 villages, and those
of the Holy Archangels numbered 77.5

Theatrical reconstruction of a religious event
from the Middle Ages

Especially
noteworthy is the 1330 Decani Charter, with its detailed list of households
and of chartered villages. The Decant estate was an extensive area which
encompassed parts of what is today northwestern Albania. Historical
analysis and onomastic research reveal that only three of the 89 settlements
were mentioned as being Albanian. Out of the 2,166 farming homesteads
and 2,666 houses in cattle-grazing land, 44 were registrated as Albanian
(1,8%). More recent research indicates that apart from the Slav, i.e.
Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohia, the remaining population of
non-Slav origin did not account for more than 2% of the total population
in the 14th century.6

The
growing political power, territorial expansion and economic wealth of
the Serbian state had a major impact on ethnic processes. Northern Albania
up to the Mati River was a part of the Serbian Kingdom, but it was not
until the conquest of Tsar Dusan that the entire Albania (with the exception
of Durazzo) entered the Serbian Empire. Fourteenth century records mention
mobile Albanian mobile cattle sheds on mountain slopes in the imminent
vicinity of Metohia, and sources in the first half of the 15th century
note their presence (albeit in smaller number) in the flatland farming
settlements.

Stefan
Dusan's Empire stretched from the Danube to the Peloponnese and from
Bulgaria to the Albanian littoral. After his death it began to disintegrate
into areas controlled by powerful regional lords. Kosovo and parts of
Metohia came under the rule of King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, the co-ruler
of the last Nemanjic, Tsar Uros. The earliest clashes with the Turks,
who edged their way into Europe at the start of the 14th century, were
noted during the reign of Stefan Dusan. The 1371 battle of the Marica,
near Crnomen in which Turkish troops rode rougshod over the huge army
of the Mrnjavcevic brothers, the feudal lords of Macedonia, Kosovo and
neighboring regions, heralded the decisive Turkish invasion of Serbian
lands. King Vukasin's successor King Marko (the legendary hero of folk
poems, Kralyevich Marko) recognized the supreme authority of the sultan
and as vasal took part in his campaigns against neighboring Christian
states. The Turkish onslaught is remembered as the apocalypse of the
Serbian people, and this tradition was cherished during the long period
of Ottoman rule. During the Battle of the Marica, a monk wrote that
"the worst of all times" had come, when "the living envied
the dead".7

Unaware
of the danger that were looming over their lands, the regional lords
tried to take advantage of the new situation and enlarge their holdings.
On the eve of the battle of Kosovo, the northern parts of Kosovo where
in possession of Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic, and parts of Metohia belonged
to his brother-in-law Vuk Brankovic. By quelling the resistance of the
local landed gentry, Prince Lazar eventually emerged as the most powerful
regional lord and came to dominate the lands of Moravian Serbia. Tvrtko
I Kotromanic, King of Bosnia, Prince Lazar's closest ally, aspired to
the political legacy of the saintly dynasty as descendant of the Nemanjices
and by being crowned with the "dual crown" of Bosnia and Serbia
over St. Sava grave in monastery Mileseva.8

The
expected clash with the Turks took place in Kosovo polje, outside of
Pristina, on St. Vitus day, June 15 (28), 1389. The troops of Prince
Lazar, Vuk Brankovic and King Tvrtko I, confronted the army of Emir
Murad I, which included his Christian vassals. Both Prince Lazar and
emir Murad were killed in the head-on collision between the two armies
(approximately 30,000 troops on both sides). Contemporaries were especially
impressed by the tidings that twelve Serbian knights (most probably
led by legendary hero Milos Obilic) broke through the tight Turkish
ranks and killed the emir in his tent.9

Prince Lazar on a 19c. Serbian painting

Military-wise
no real victor emerged from the battle. Tvrtko's emissaries told the
courts of Europe that the Christian army had defeated the infidels,
although Prince Lazar's successors, exhausted by their heavy losses,
immediately sought peace and conceded to became vassals to the new sultan.
Vuk Brankovic, unjustly remembered in epic tradition as a traitor who
slipped away from the battle field, resisted them until 1392, when he
was forced to become their vassal. The Turks took Brankovic's lands
and gave them to a more loyal vassal, Prince Stefan Lazarevic, son of
Prince Lazar thereby creating a rift between their heirs. After the
battle of Angora in 1402, Prince Stefan took advantage of the chaos
in the Ottoman state. In Constantinople he received the title of despot,
and upon returning home, having defeated Brankovic's relatives he took
control over the lands of his father. Despite frequent internal conflicts
and his vassal obligations to the Turks and Hungarians, despot Stefan
revived and economically consolidated the Serbian state, the center
of which was gradually moving northward. Under his rule Novo Brdo in
Kosovo became the economic center of Serbia where in he issued a Law
of Mines in 1412.10

Stefan
appointed as his successor his nephew despot Djuradj Brankovic, whose
rule was marked by fresh conflicts and finally the fall of Kosovo and
Metohia to the Turks. The campaign of the Christian army led by Hungarian
nobleman Janos Hunyadi ended in 1448 in heavy defeat in a clash with
Murad II's forces, again in Kosovo Polje. This was the last concertive
attempt in the Middle Ages to rout the Turks out of this part of Europe.11

After
the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Mehmed II the Conqueror advanced
onto Despotate of Serbia. For some time voivode Nikola Skobaljic offered
valiant resistance in Kosovo, but after a series of consecutive campaigns
and lengthy sieges in 1455, the economic center of Serbia, Novo Brdo
fell. The Turks then proceeded to conquer other towns in Kosovo and
Metohia four years before the entire Serbian Despotate collapsed with
the fall of new capital Smederevo. Turkish onslaught, marked by frequent
military raids, the plunder and devastation of entire regions, the destruction
of monasteries and churches, gradually narrowed down Serbian state territories,
triggering off a large-scale migration northwards, to regions beyond
reach to the conquerors. The biggest migration took place from 1480-1481,
when a large part of the population of northern Serbia moved to Hungary
and Transylvania, to bordering region along the Sava and Danube rivers,
where the descendants of the fleeing despots of Smederevo resisted the
Turks for several decades to come.12

For the Serbs as Christians, their loss of state independence and fall
to the Ottoman Empire's kind of theocratic state, was a terrible misfortune.
With the advent of the Turks and establishment of their rule, the lands
of Serbs were forcibly excluded from the circle of progressive European
states wherein they occupied a prominent place precisely owing to the
Byzantine civilisation, which was enhanced by local qualities and strong
influences of the neighboring Mediterranean states. Being Christians,
the Serbs became second-class citizens in Islamic state. Apart from
religious discrimination, which was evident in all spheres of everyday
life, this status of rayah also implied social dependence, as most of
the Serbs were landless peasants who paid the prescribed feudal taxes.
Of the many dues paid in money, labor and kind, the hardest for the
Serbs was having their children taken as tribute under a law that had
the healthy boys, taken from their parents, converted to Islam and trained
to serve in the janissary corps of the Turkish army.

An analyse of the earliest Turkish censuses, defters, shows that the
ethnic picture of Kosovo and Metohia did not alter much during the 14th
and 15th centuries. The small-in-number Turkish population consisted
largely of people from the administration and military that were essential
in maintaining order, whereas Christians continued to predominate in
the rural areas. Kosovo and parts of Metohia were registrated in 1455
under the name Vilayeti Vlk, after Vuk Brankovic who once ruled over
them. Some 75,000 inhabitants lived in 590 registrated villages. An
onomastic analysis of approximately 8,500 personal names shows that
Slav and Christian names were heavily predominant.1

Along
with the Decani Charter, the register of the Brankovic region shows
a clear division between old-Serbian and old-ethnic Albanian onomastics,
allowing one to say, with some certainty which registrated settlement
was Serbian, and which ethnically mixed. Ethnic designations (ethnic
Albanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek) appeared repeatedly next to the
names of settlers in the region. More thorough onomastic research has
shown that from the mid-14th to the 15th centuries, individual Albanian
settlements appeared on the fringes of Metohia, in-between what had
until then been a density of Serbian villages. This was probably due
to the devastation wrought by Turks who destroyed the old landed estates,
thus allowing for the mobile among the population, including ethnic
Albanian cattlemen, to settle on the abandoned land and establish their
settlements, which were neither big nor heavily populated.2

A
summary census of the houses and religious affiliations of inhabitants
in the Vucitrn district (sanjak), which encompassed the one-time Brankovic
lands, was drawn in 1487, showed that the ethnic situation had not altered
much. Christian households predominated (totalling 16,729, out of which
412 were in Pristina and Vucitrn): there were 117 Muslim households
(94 in Pristina and 83 in rural areas). A comprehensive census of the
Scutari district offers the following picture: in Pec (Ipek) there were
33 Muslim and 121 Christian households, while in Suho Grlo, also in
Metohia, Christians alone lived in 131 households. The number of Christians
(6,124) versus Muslim (55) homes in the rural areas shows that 1% of
the entire population bowed to the faith of the conqueror. An analysis
of the names shows that those of Slav origin predominated among the
Christians. In Pec, 68% of the population bore Slav names, in the Suho
Grlo region 52%, in Donja Klina region 50% and around monastery of Decani
64%.

Ethnic
Albanian settlements where people had characteristic names did not appear
until one reached areas outside the borders of what is today Metohia,
i.e. west of Djakovica. According to Turkish sources, in the period
from 1520 to 1535 only 700 of the total number of 19,614 households
in the Vucitrn district were Muslim (about 3,5%), and 359 (2%)in Prizren
district.

In
regions extending beyond the geographic borders of Kosovo and Metohia,
in the Scutari and Dukagjin districts, Muslims accounted for 4,6% of
the population. According to an analysis of the names in the Dukagjin
district's census, ethnic Albanian settlements did not predominate until
one reached regions south of Djakovica, and the ethnic picture in the
16th century in Prizren and the neighboring areas remained basically
unchanged.3

A
look at the religious affiliation of the urban population shows a rise
in the Turkish and local Islamized population. In Prizren, Kosovo's
biggest city, Muslims accounted for 56% of the households, of which
the Islamized population accounted for 21%. The ratio was similar in
Pristina, where out of the 54% Muslim population 16% were converts.
Pec also had a Muslim majority (90%), as did Vucitrn (72%). The Christians
compromised the majority of the population in the mining centers of
Novo Brdo (62%), Trepca (77%), Donja Trepca and Belasica (85%). Among
the Christians was a smattering of Catholics. The Christian names were
largely from the calendar, and to a lesser extent Slav (Voja, Dabiziv,
Cvetko, Mladen, Stojko), and there were some that were typically ethnic
Albanian (Prend, Don, Din, Zoti).4

After the fall of Serbia in 1459, the Pec Patriarchate soon ceased to
work and the Serbian eparchies came under the jurisdiction of the Hellenic
Ochrid Archbishophoric. In the first decade following Turkish conquest,
many large endowments and wealthier churches were pillaged and destroyed,
while some turned into mosques. The Our Lady of Ljeviska Cathedral in
Prizren was probably converted into a mosque right immediately following
the conquest of the town; Banjska, one of the grandest monasteries dating
from the age of King Milutin, suffered the same fate. The Church of
the Holy Archangels near Prizren, Stefan Dusan's chief endowment was
turned into ruins. Most of the monasteries and churches were left unrenewed
after being devastated, and many village churches were abandoned. Many
were not restored until after the liberation of Kosovo and Metohia in
1912. Archeological findings have shown that some 1,300 monasteries,
churches and other monuments existed in the Kosovo and Metohia area.
The magnitude of the havoc wrought can be seen from the earliest Turkish
censuses: In the 15th and 16th centuries there were ten to fourteen
active places of Christian worship. At first the great monasteries like
Decani and Gracanica, were exempt from destruction, but their wealthy
estates were reduced to a handfull of surrounding villages. The privileges
granted the monastic brotherhoods by the sultans obliged them to perform
the service of falconry as well.5

Two brothers of
different faith and historical roles - Patriarch Makarije Sokolovic
and his relative (a brother?) Mehmed Pasha Sokollu (who was taken as
a little child by Turks to be a yannisar)

The
restoration of the Pec Patriarchate in 1557 (thanks to Mehmed-pasha
Sokolovic, a Serb by origin, at the time the third vizier at the Porte)
marked a major turn and helped revive the spiritual life of the Serbs,
especially in Kosovo and Metohia. Mehmed-pasha Sokolovic (Turkish: Sokollu)
enthroned his relative Makarije Sokolovic on the patriarchal throne.
Like the great reform movements in 16th century Europe, the restoration
of the Serbian Orthodox Church meant the rediscovery of lost spiritual
strongholds. Thanks to the Patriarchate, Kosovo and Metohia were for
the next two centuries again the spiritual and political center of the
Serbs. On an area vaster than the Nemanjic empire, high-ranking ecclesiastical
dignitaries revived old and created new eparchies endeavoring to reinforce
the Orthodox faith which had been undermined by influences alien (particularly
by Islamic Bekteshi order of dervishes) to its authentic teachings.

Based
on the tradition of the medieval Serbian state, the Pec Patriarchate
revived old and established new cults of the holy rulers, archbishops,
martyrs and warriors, lending life to the Nemanjic heritage. The feeling
of religious and ethnic solidarity was enhanced by joint deliberation
at church assemblies attended by the higher and lower clergy, village
chiefs and hajduk leaders, and by stepping up a morale on the traditions
of Saint Sava but suited to the new conditions and strong patriarchal
customs renewed after the Turkish conquest in the village communities.

The
spiritual rebirth was reflected in the restoration of deserted churches
and monasteries: some twenty new churches were built in Kosovo and Metohia
alone, inclusive of printing houses (the most important one was at Gracanica):
many old and abandoned churches were redecorated with frescoes.6

Serbian
patriarchs and bishops gradually took over the role of the one-time
rulers, endeavoring with assistance from the neighboring Christian states
of Habsburg Empire and the Venetian Republic, to incite the people to
rebel. Plans for overthrowing the Turks and re-establishing an independent
Serbian state sprang throughout the lands from the Adriatic to the Danube.
The patriarchs of Pec, often learned men and able politicians, were
usually the ones who initiated and coordinated efforts at launching
popular uprisings when the right moment came. Patriarch Jovan failed
to instigate a major rebellion against the Turks, seeking the alliance
of the European Christian powers assembled around Pope Clement VII.
Patriarch Jovan was assassinated in Constantinople in 1614. Patriarch
Gavrilo Rajic lived the same fate in 1659 after going to Russia to seek
help in instigating a revolt.

The
least auspicious conditions for an uprising were actually in Kosovo
and Metohia itself. In the fertile plains, the non-Muslim masses labored
under the yoke of the local Turkish administrators, continually threatened
by marauding tribes from the Albanian highlands. The crisis that overcome
the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century further aggrovated the position
of the Serbs in Kosovo, Metohia and neighboring regions. Rebellions
fomented by cattle-raising tribes in Albania and Montenegro, and the
punitive expeditions sent to deal with them turned Kosovo and Metohia
into a bloody terrain where Albanian tribes, kept clashing with detachments
of the local authorities, plundered Christian villages along the way.
Hardened by constant clashes with the Turks, Montenegro gradually picked
up the torch of defending Serbian Orthodoxy; meanwhile, in northern
Albania, particularly in Malesia, a reverse process was under way. Under
steady pressure from the Turkish authorities, the Islamization of ethnic
Albanian tribes became more widespread and the process assumed broader
proportions when antagonistic strivings grew within the Ottoman Empire
in the late 17th and early 18th century.7

The ruins of the Ancient Novo Brdo Basilica - Novo
Brdo was one of the major medieval cities in Kosovo. In the 14th century
the population of Novo Brdo was greater than London

It
is not until the end of the 17th century that the colonization of Albanian
tribes in Kosovo and Metohia can be established. Reports by contemporary
Catholic visitators show that the ethnic border between the Serbs and
Albanians still followed the old dividing lines of the Black and White
Drim rivers. All reports on Kosovo and Metohia regard them as being
in Serbia: for the Catholic visitators, Prizren was still its capital
city. In Albania, the first wave of Islamization swept the feudal strata
and urban population. Special tax and political alleviations encouraged
the rural population to convert to Islam in larger number. Instead of
being part of the oppressed non-Muslim masses, the converts became a
privileged class of Ottoman society, with free access to the highest
positions in the state. In Kosovo and Metohia, where they moved to avoid
heavy taxes, Catholic tribes of Malesia converted to Islam. Conversion
to Islam in a strongly Orthodox environment rendered them the desired
privileges (the property of Orthodox and of the Catholics) and saved
them from melting with Serbian Orthodox population. It was only with
the process of Islamization that the ethnic Albanian colonisation of
lands inhabited by Serbs became expansive.8

The
ethnic picture of Kosovo did not radically change in the first centuries
of Ottoman rule. Islamization encompassed part of a Serbian population,
although the first generations at least, converted as a mere formality,
to avoid heavy financial burdens and constant political pressure. Conversion
constituted the basis of Ottoman policy in the Balkans but it was les
successfull in Kosovo and Metohia, regions with the strongest religious
traditions, than in other Christian areas. The Turks' strong reaction
to rebellions throughout the Serbian lands and to the revival of Orthodoxy,
embodied in the cult of Saint Sava, the founder of the independent Serbian
church, ended in setting fire to the Mileseva monastery the burial place
of the first Serbian saint. The Turks burned his wonder working relics
in Belgrade in 1594, during a great uprising of Serbs in southern Banat.
This triggered off fresh waves of Islamization accompanied by severe
reprisals and the thwarting of any sign of rebellion.

Apart
from Islamization, Kosovo and Metohia became the target of proselytizing
Catholic missionaries at the end of 17th century, especially after the
creation of the Sacra Congregazione de Propaganda Fide (1622). The ultimate
aim of the Roman Catholic propaganda was to converts the Orthodox to
Graeco-Catholicism as the initial phase in completely converting them
to the Catholic faith. The appeals of patriarchs of Pec to the Roman
popes to help the liberatory aspirations of the Serbs were met with
the condition that they renounce the Orthodox faith. In spreading the
Catholicism, the missionaries of the Roman Curia had the support of
local Turkish authorities; a considerable number of the missionaries
were of Albanian origin. Consequently, the propagators of Catholic proselytism
persisted in inciting Catholic and Muslim Albanians against the Serbs,
whose loyalty to Orthodoxy and their medieval traditions was the main
obstacle to the spreading of the Catholic faith in the central and southern
regions of the Balkans.9

Catholic
propaganda attempts at separating the high clergy of the Serbian Orthodox
Church from the people prompted the Pec Patriarchate to revive old and
create a new cults with even greater vigor. In 1642 Patriarch Pajsije,
who was born in Janjevo, Kosovo, wrote The Service and The Life of the
last Nemanjic, the Holy Tsar Uros, imbuing old literary forms with new
content reflecting the contemporary moment. By introducing popular legends
(which gradually took shape),into classical hagiography Patriarch Pajsije
strove to establish a new cult of saints which would have a beneficial
impact on his compatriots in preserving their faith.

Parallel
with the Orthodox Church national policy in traditionally patriarchal
societies, popular tales gradually matured into oral epic chronicles.
Nurtured through epic poetry, which was sung to the accompaniment of
the gusle, epic tales glorified national heroes and ruler, cultivating
the spirit of non-subjugation and cherishing the hope in liberation
from the Turkish yoke. Folk poems about the battle of Kosovo and its
heroes, about the tragic fate of the last Nemanjices, the heroism of
Prince Lazar and his knight Milos Obilic, and, especially, about Kraljevic
Marko (King Marko Mrnjavcevic) as the faultless and dauntless legendary
knight who was always defeating Turks and saving Serbs, were an expression
not only of the tragic sense of life in which Turkish rule was a synonymous
to evil, but a particular moral code that in time crystalized into a
common attitude towards life, defined in the first centuries of Ottoman
rule. The Serbian nation's Kosovo covenant is embodied in the choice
which, according to legend, was made by Prince Lazar on the eve of the
battle of Kosovo. The choice of freedom in the kingdom of heaven instead
of humiliation in the kingdom of earth constituted the Serbian nation's
spiritual stronghold. Prince Lazar's refusal to resign to injustice
and slavery, raised to the level of biblical drama, determined his unquenchable
thirst for freedom. Together with the cult of Saint Sava, which grew
into a common civilisational framework in everyday life, the Kosovo
idea which, in time, gained universal meaning. With its wise policy
the Patriarchate of Pec carefully built epic legend into the hagiography
of old and new Serbian saints, glorifying their works in frescoes and
icons.10

The Serbs stepped again onto the historical scene in the years of the
European wars that swept the continent from the forests of Ireland to
the walls of Constantinople in the late 17th century. The Turks finally
withdrew from Hungary and Transylvania when their Ottoman hordes were
routed outside Vienna in 1683. The disintegration of Ottoman rule in
the southwest limbered up the Serbs, arousing in them hope that the
moment was ripe for joint effort to break Turkish dominion in the Balkans.
The neighboring Christian powers (Austria and Venice) were the only
possible allies. The arrival of the Austrian army in Serbia after the
fall of Belgrade in 1688 prompted the Serbs to join it. Thanks to the
support of Serbian insurgents, the imperial troops penetrated deep into
Serbia and in 1689 conquered Nis: a special Serbian militia was formed
as a separate corps of the imperial troops.1
After setting fire to Skoplje (Uskub), which was raging with plague,
the commander of Austrian troops Ennea Silviae Piccolomini withdrew
to Prizren where he was greeted by 20,000 Serbian insurgents, and with
whom he reached an accord on fighting the Turks with joint forces. Shortly
afterwards, Piccollomini died of the plague, and his successors failed
to prevent their troops from marauding the surrounding regions. Disappointed
by the conduct of the Christian troops from which they had expected
decisive support, the Serbian insurgents abandoned the agreed alliance.
Patriarch Arsenije III Crnojevic tried in vain to arrive at a new agreement
with the Austrian generals. The restorer of the Ottoman Empire, Grand
Vizier Mustafa-Pasha Koporilli, an Albanian by origin, took advantage
of the lull in military operations, mustered Crimean Tatars and Islamized
Albanians and mounted a major campaign. Despite assurances of help,
Catholic Albanian tribes deserted the Austrian army on the eve of the
decisive clash at Kacanik in Kosovo, on January 1690. The Serbian militia,
resisting the Sultan's superior hordes, retreated to the west and north
of the country.2

Turkish
retaliation, in which the Serbian infidels were raided and viciously
massacred lasted a three full months. The towns of Prizren, Pec, Pristina,
Vucitrn and Mitrovica were hit the worst, and Serbs from Novo Brdo retreated
from the Tatar saber. Fleeing from the brutal reprisal, the people of
Kosovo and the neighboring areas moved northwards with Patriarch Arsenije
III. The decision to end the massacre and declare an amnesty came belately
as much of the population had already fled for safer areas, moving towards
the Sava River and Belgrade. Other parts of Serbia were also targets
of ghastly reprisals. In the Belgrade pashalik alone, the number of
taxpayers dropped eightfold. Grand old monasteries were looted from
Pec Patriarchate to Gracanica, and the Albanian tribe Gashi pillaged
the Decani monastery, killing the prior and seizing the monastery's
best estates.

At
the invitation of emperor Leopold I, Patriarch Arsenije III led part
of the high clergy and a sizeable part of the refugees (tens of thousands
of people) to the Habsburg Empire to the territory of southern Hungary,
having received assurances that the Serbs would there be granted special
political and religious status. Many Serbs from Kosovo and Metohia followed
him. The new churches built along the Danube they named after those
left in old homeland.

The
Great 1690 Migration was a important turning point in the history of
the Serbs. In Kosovo and Metohia alone, towns and some villages were
abandoned to the last inhabitant. The population was also decimated
by the plague, whatever remained after the Turkish troops. The physical
extermination along with the mass exodus, the burning of grand monasteries
and their rich treasuries and libraries, the death and murder of a large
number of monks and clergy wreaked havoc in these regions. The position
of the Pec Patriarchate was badly shaken; its highest clergy went with
the people to Austria, and the confusion wrought by the Great Migration
had a major influence on its abolition (1766).3

The
hardest consequence of the Great Migration was demographic upheaval
it caused, because once the Serbs withdraw from Kosovo and Metohia,
Islamized Albanian tribes from the northern highlands started settling
the area in greater number, mostly by force, in the decade following
the 1690 Great Migration of Serbs, ethnic Albanian tribes (given their
incredible powers of reproduction) was posing a grave threat to the
biological survival of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia. Colonies set
up by the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Metohia and the neighboring areas
provoked a fresh Serbian migration toward the north, encouraged the
process of conversion and upset the centuries-old ethnic balance in
those areas. Supported (depending on circumstances) by the Turks and
the Roman Curia, ethnic Albanians, abyding by their tribal customs and
hajduk insubordination to the law, in the coming centuries turned the
entire region of Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody battleground, marked
by tribal and feudal anarchy. The period following the Great Migration
of Serbia marked the commencement of three centuries of ethnic Albanian
genocide against Serbs in their native land.

The
century after the Great Migration saw a fresh exodus of the Serbs from
Kosovo and Metohia, and a growing influence of ethnic Albanians on political
circumstances. Ethnic Albanians used the support they received from
the Turkish army in fighting Serbian insurgents to seize the ravaged
land and abandoned mining centers in Kosovo and Metohia and to enter
in large numbers the Ottoman administration and military. More and more
Catholic ethnic-Albanians converted to Islam, thereby acquiring the
right to retain the estates they had seized and to apply the might-is-right
principle in their dealings with the non-Muslim Serbs. The authorities
encouraged and assisted the settlement of the newly Islamized ethnic-Albanian
tribes from the mountains to the fertile lands devastated by war. The
dissipation of the Turkish administrative system encouraged the ethnic-Albanian
colonisation of Kosovo and Metohia, since with the arrival of more of
their fellow tribesmen and compatriots, the local pashas and beys (most
of whom were ethnic Albanian) acquired strong tribal armies which in
times of trouble helped them hold on to their position and illegally
pass on their power to their descendents. The missionaries of the Roman
Curia did not heed to preserve the small ethnic Albanian Catholic population,
but endeavoured instead to inflict as much harm as possible on the Pec
Patriarchate and its dignitaries, and, with the help of bribable pashas,
to undermine the cohesive power of Serbian Orthodoxy in these areas.4

The
next war between Austria and Turkey (1716-1718) marked the beginning
of a fresh persecution in Kosovo and Metohia. Austrian troops, backed
by Serbian volunteers, reached the Western Morava River where they established
a new frontier. Ethnic Albanians collectively guaranteed to the Porte
the safety of the regions in the immediate vicinity of Austria, and
were in return exempted from the heaviest taxes. Towards the end of
the war (1717), a major Serbian uprising broke out in Vucitrn and its
surroundings: it was brutally crushed and the troops sent to allay the
rayah and launch an investigation, perpetrated fresh atrocities. Excessive
dues, robbery and the threat of extermination put before the Kosovo
Serbs the choices of either converting to Islam or finding a powerful
master who would protect them if they accepted the status of serfs.
Many opted for a third solution: they moved to surrounding regions where
life was more tolerable.5

The
following war between Austria and Turkey (1737-1739) ended with the
routing of the imperial troops from Serbian territory. The border was
reestablished at the Sava and Danube rivers, and Serbs set out on another
migration. Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanovic, along with the religious
and national leaders of Pec, drew up a plan for cooperation with the
Austrian forces, and contacted their commanders. A large-scale uprisings
broke out again in Kosovo and Metohia, engaging some 10.000 Serbs. They
were joined by Montenegrin tribes, and Austrian envoys even stirred
up the Kliments, a Catholic tribe from northern Albania. A Serbian militia
was formed again, but the Austrian troops and insurgenta were forced
to retreat in the face of superior Turkish power: reprisals ensued,
bringing death to the insurgents and their families. Serbs withdrew
from the mining settlements around Janjevo, Pristina, Novo Brdo and
Kopaonik. In order to keep the remaining populace on the land, the Turks
declared an amnesty. After the fall of Belgrade, Arsenije IV moved to
Austria. The number of refugees from Serbia, including Kosovo and Metohia,
along with some Kliments has yet to be accurately determined, as people
were moving on all sides and the process lasted for several months.
The considerably reduced number of taxpayers in Kosovo and Metohia and
in other parts of Serbia points to a strong migratory wave.6

Unrest
in the Ottoman empire helped spread anarchy in Kosovo and Metohia and
rest of Serbia. Raids, murder, rape against the unarmed population was
largely committed by ethnic Albanian outlaws, who were now numerically
superior in many regions. Outlaw bands held controll over roads during
Turkey's war with Russia (1768-1774), when lawlessness reigned throughout
Serbia. Ethnic Albanian outlaws looted and fleeced other regions as
well, which sent local Muslims complaining to the Porte seeking protection.

Christians in the Balkans tried many times to liberate themselves from
the Turkish rule. Although Ottoman Empire ruled Serbia for 5 centuries
the Christian people have never lost their feeling thet they live under
the foreign rule and foreign and unfriendly islamic civilization

During
the last Austro-Turkish war (1788-1791); a sweeping popular movement
again took shape in northern Serbia. Because of the imperial forces
swift retreat, the movement did not encompass the southern parts of
Serbia: Kosovo, Metohia and present-day northern Macedonia. The peace
treaty of Sistovo (1791) envisaged a general amnesty for the Serbs,
but the ethnic Albanians, as outlaws or soldiers in the detachments
of local pashas, continued unhindered to assault the unprotected Serbian
population. The wave of religious intolerance towards Orthodox population,
which acquired greater proportion owing to the hostilities with Russia
at the end of 18th century, effected the forced conversion to Islam
of a larger number of Serbian families. The abolition of the Pec Patriarchate
(1766), whose see and rich estates were continually sought after by
local ethnic Albanian pashas and beys, prompted the final wave of extensive
Islamization in Kosovo and Metohia.7

Those
who suffered the most during these centuries of utter lawlessness were
the Serbs, unreliable subjects who would rise every time the Turks would
wage war against one of the neighboring Great Powers, and whose patriarchs
led the people to enemy land. Although initially on a small scale, the
Islamization of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia began before the penetration
of ethnic Albanians. More widespread conversion to Islam took place
in the 17th and the first half of 18th centuries, when ethnic Albanians
began to wield more influence on political events in these regions.
Many Serbs accepted Islamization as a necessary evil, waiting for the
moment when they could revert to the faith of their ancestors, but most
of them never lived to see that day. The first few generations of Islamized
Serbs preserved their language and observed their old customs (especially
slava - the family patron saint day, and the Easter holiday). But several
generations later, owing to a strong ethnic Albanian environment, they
gradually began adopting the Albanian dress to safety, and outside their
narrow family circle they spoke the Albanian language. Thus came into
being a special kind of social mimicry which enabled converts to survive.
Albanization began only when Islamized Serbs, who were void of national
feeling, married girls from ethnic Albanian tribal community. For a
long time Orthodox Serbs called their Albanized compatriots Arnautasi,
until the memory of their Serbian origin waned completely, though old
customs and legends about their ancestors were passed on from one generation
to the next.8

For
a long time the Arnautasi felt neither like Turks nor ethnic Albanians,
because their customs and traditions set them apart, and yet they did
not feel like Serbs either, who considered Orthodoxy to be their prime
national trait. Many Arnautasi retained their old surnames until the
turn of the last century. In Drenica the Arnautasi bore such surnames
as Dokic, Velic, Marusic, Zonic, Racic, Gecic, which unquestionably
indicated their Serbian origin. The situation was similar in Pec and
its surroundings where many Islamized and Albanized Serbs carries typically
Serbian surnames: Stepanovic, Bojkovic, Dekic, Lekic, Stojkovic, etc.
The eastern parts of Kosovo and Metohia, with their compact Serbian
settlements, were the last to undergo Islamization. The earliest Islamization
in Upper Morava and Izmornik is pinpointed as taking place in the first
decades of the 18th century, and the latest in 1870s. Toponyms in many
ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo show that Serbs had lived there the
preceding centuries, and in some places Orthodox cemeteries were shielded
against desecrators by ethnic Albanians themselves, because they knew
that the graves of their own ancestors lay there.9

In
the late 18th century, all the people of Gora, the mountain region near
Prizren were converted to Islam. However they succeeded in preserving
their language and avoiding Albanization. There were also some cases
of conversion of Serbs to Islam in the second half of 19th century,
especially during the Crimean War, again to save their lives, honor
and property, though far more pronounced at the time was the process
of emigration, since families, sometimes even entire villages, fled
to Serbia or Montenegro. Extensive anthropogeographic research indicates
that about 30% of the present-day ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo
and Metohia is of Serbian origin.10

The series of long-scale Christian national movements in the Balkans,
triggered off by 1804 Serbian revolution, decided more than in the earlier
centuries, the fate of Serbs and made ethnic Albanians (about 70% of
whom were Muslims) the main guardians of Turkish order in the European
provinces of Ottoman Empire. At a time when the Eastern question was
again being raised, particularly in the final quarter of 19th and the
first decade of 20th century, Islamic Albanians were the chief instrument
of Turkey's policy in crushing the liberation movements of other Balkan
states. After the congress of Berlin (1878) an Albanian national movement
flared up, and both the Sultan and Austria-Hungary, a power whose occupation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina heralded its further expansion deep into the
Balkans, endeavored, with varying degrees of success, to instrumentalize
this movement. While the Porte used the ethnic Albanians as Islam's
shock cutting edge against Christians in the frontier regions towards
Serbia and Montenegro, particularly in Kosovo, Metohia and the nearby
areas, Austria-Hungary's design was to use the Albanians national movement
against the liberatory aspirations of the two Serbian states that were
impeding the German Drang nach Osten. In a rift between two only seemingly
contrary strivings, Serbia and Montenegro, although independent since
1878, were powerless (at least until the Balkan wars 1912-1913) without
the support of Russia or other Great Power to effect the position of
their compatriots within the borders of Ottoman Empire.1
During the Serbian revolution, which ended with the creation of the
autonomous Principality of Serbia within the Ottoman empire (1830),
Kosovo and Metohia acquired special political importance. The hereditary
ethnic Albanian pashas, who had until then been mostly renegades from
the central authorities in Constantinople, feared that the flames of
rebellion might spread to regions they controlled thus they became champions
for the defense the integrity of the Turkish Empire and leaders of many
military campaigns against the Serbian insurgents, at the core of the
Serbian revolution was the Kosovo covenant, embodied in the "revenge
of Kosovo", a fresh, decisive battle against the Turkish invaders
in the field of Kosovo. In 1806 the insurgents were preparing, like
Prince Lazar in his day, to come out in Kosovo and weigh their forces
against the Turks, However, detachments of Serbian insurgents reached
only the fringes of northern Kosovo. Metohia, Old Raska (Sandzak), Kosovo
and northern Macedonia remained outside the borders of the Serbian principality.
In order to highlight their importance in the national and political
ideologies of the renewed Serbian state, they were given a new collective
name. It was not by chance that Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, the father
of modern Serbian literacy, named the central lands of the Nemanjic
state - Old Serbia.2

Celekula in Nis - Tower of Skulls

Fearing
the renewed Serbian state, Kosovo pashas engaged in ruthless persecution
in an effort to reduce number of Serbs living in their spacious holdings.
The French travel writer F.C.H.L Pouqueville was astounded by the utter
anarchy and ferocity of the local pashas towards the Christians. Jashar-pasha
Gjinolli of Prishtina was one of the worst, destroying several churches
in Kosovo, seizing monastic lands and killing monks. In just a few years
of sweeping terror, he evicted more than seventy Serbian villages between
Vucitrn and Gnjilane, dividing up the seized land among the local Islamized
population and mountain folk that had settled there from northern Albania.
The fertile plains of Kosovo became desolate meadows as the Malisor
highlanders, unused to farming knew not to cultivate.

The
revolt of the ethnic Albanian pashas against the reforms introduced
by the sultans and fierce clashes with regular Turkish troops in the
thirties and forties of the 19th century, emphasized the anarchy in
Kosovo and Metohia, causing fresh suffering among the Serbs and the
further devastation of the ancient monasteries. Since neither Serbian
nor Montenegro, two semi-independent Serbian states, were able to give
any significant help to the gravely endangered people, Serbian leaders
form the Pristina and Vucitrn regions turned to the Russian tsar in
seeking protection from their oppressors. They set out that they were
forced to choose between converting to Islam or fleeing for Serbia as
the violence, especially killings, the persecution of monks, the raping
of women and minors, had exceeded all bounds. Pogroms marked the decades
to come, especially in period of the Crimean War (1853-1856) when anti-Slav
sentiments reached their peak in the ottoman empire: ethnic Albanians
and the Cherkeses, whom the Turks had resettled in Kosovo, joined the
Ottoman troops in persecuting Orthodox Serbs.

The
brotherhood of Decani and the Pec Patriarchate turned to the authorities
of Serbia for protection. Pointing to the widespread violence and increasing
banditry, and to more frequent and persisted attempts by Catholic missionaires
to compel the impoverished and spiritually discouraged monk communities
to concede to union. Prior Serafim Ristic of Decani loged complaints
with both the sultan and Russian tsar and in his book Plac Stare Srbije
(Zemun 1864) he penned hundreds of examples of violence perpetrated
by the ethnic Albanians and Turks against the Serbs, naming the perpetrators,
victims and type of crime. In Metohia alone he recorded over one hundred
cases in which the Turkish authorities, police and judiciary tolerated
and abetted robbery, bribery, murder, arson, the desecration of churches,
the seizure of property and livestock, the rape of women and children,
and the harassment of monks and priests. Both ethnic Albanians and Turks
viewed assaults against Serbs as acts pleasing to Allah acts that punishing
infidels for not believing in true God: kidnapping and Islamizing girls
were a way for true Muslims to approach Allah. Ethnic Albanian outlaws
(kayaks) became heroes among their fellow-tribesmen for fulfilling their
religious obligations in the right way and spreading the militant glory
of their clan and tribe.

Eloquent
testimonies to the scope of the violence against the Serbs in Kosovo
and Metohia, ranging from blackmail and robbery to rape and murder,
come from many foreign travel-writers, from A. F. Hilferding to G. M.
McKenzie - A. P. Irby. The Russian consul in Prizren observed that ethnic
Albanians were settling the Prizren district underhidered and were trying,
with the Turks, to eradicate Christians from Kosovo and Metohia. Throughout
the 19th century there was no public safety on the roads of Metohia
and Kosovo. One could travel the roads which were controlled by tribal
bands, only with strong armed escort. The Serbian peasant had no protection
in the field where he could be assaulted and robbed by an outlaw or
bandit, and if he tried to resist, he could be killed without the perpetrator
having to face charges for the crime. Serbs, as non-Muslims, were not
entitled to carry arms. Those who possessed and used arms in self-defence
afterwards had to run for their life. Only the luckiest managed to reach
the Serbian or Montenegrin border and find permanent refuge there. They
were usually followed by large families called family cooperatives (zadruga),
comprising as many as 30-50 members, which were unable to defend themselves
against the numerous relatives of the ethnic Albanian seeking vengeance
for his death in a conflict with an elder of their clan.

Economic
pressure, especially the forced reducing of free peasants to serf, was
fostered by ethnic Albanian feudal lords with a view to creating large
land-holdings. In the upheavals of war (1859, 1863) the Turkish authorities
tried to restrict enterprising Serbian merchants and craftsmen who flourished
in Pristina, Pec and Prizren, setting ablaze entire quarters where they
worked and had their shops. But it was the hardest in rural areas, because
ethnic Albanians, bond together by tight communities of blood brotherhoods
or in tribes, and relatively socially homogeneous, were able to support
their fellow tribesman without too much effort, simply by terrorizing
Serbs and seizing their property and livestock. Suppression in driving
of the Serbian peasantry, space was made for their relatives from northern
Albania to move in, whereby increased their own prestige among other
tribes. Unused to life in the plains and to hard field-work, the settled
ethnic Albanians preferred looting to farming.

Despite
the hardships, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia assembled in religious-school
communes which financed the opening of schools and the education of
children, collected donations for the restoration of churches and monasteries
and, when possible, tried to improve relations with the Turkish authorities.
In addition to monastic schools, the first Serbian secular schools started
opening in Kosovo from mid-1830s, and in 1871 a Seminary (Bogoslovija)
opened in Prizren. Unable to help politically, the Serbia systematically
aided churches and schools from the 1840s onwards, sending teachers
and encouraging the best students to continue with their studies. The
Prizren seminary the hub of activity on national affairs, educated teachers
and priests for all the Serbian lands under Turkish dominion, and unbeknownst
to authorities, established contact on a regular basis with the government
in Belgrade, wherefrom it received means and instructions for political
action.

Ethnic
circumstances in Kosovo and Metohia in the early 19th century can be
reconstructed on the basis of data obtained from the books written by
foreign travel writers and ethnographers who journeyed across European
Turkey. Joseph Miller's studies show that in late 1830s, 56,200 Christians
and 80,150 Muslims lived in Metohia; 11,740 of the Muslims were Islamized
Serbs, and 2,700 of the Christians were Catholic Albanians. However,
clear picture of the ethnic structure during this period cannot be obtained
until one takes into account the fact that from 1815 to 1837 some 320
families, numbering ten to 30 members each, fled Kosovo and Metohia
ahead of ethnic Albanian violence. According to Hilferding's figures,
Pec numbered 4,000 Muslim and 800 Christian families, Pristina numbered
1,200 Muslim, 900 Orthodox and 100 Catholic families with a population
of 12,000.3

Russian
consul Yastrebov recorded (for a 1867-1874 period) the following figures
for 226 villages in Metohia: 4,646 Muslim ethnic Albanian homes, 1,861
Orthodox and 3,740 Islamized Serbs and 142 homes of Catholic Albanians.
Despite the massive departure of the population for Serbia, available
data show that until Eastern crisis (1875-1878), Serbs formed the largest
ethnic group in Kosovo and Metohia, largely owing to a high birth rate.

Serbian Army in
front of Gracanica Monastery 1878

The
biggest demographics upheaval in Kosovo and Metohia occurred during
the Eastern crisis, especially during the 1876-1878 Serbo-Turkish wars,
when the question of Old Serbia started being internationalized. The
Ottoman empire lost a good deal of territory in its wars with Russia,
Serbia and Montenegro, and Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the second war with the Turks, Serbian troops liberated parts of
Kosovo: their advance guard reached Pristina via Gnjilane and at the
Gracanica monastery held a memorial service for the medieval heroes
of Kosovo battle... After Russia and Turkey called a truce, Serbian
troops were forced to withdraw from Kosovo. Serbian delegations from
Old Serbia sent petitions to the Serbian Prince, the Russian tsar and
participants of the Congress of Berlin, requesting that these lands
merge with Serbia. Approximately 30,000 ethnic Albanians retreated from
the liberated areas (partly under duress), seeking refuge in Kosovo
and in Metohia, while tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo and Metohia
for Serbia ahead of unleashed bashibozouks, irregular auxiliaries of
Ottoman troops.4

On
the eve of the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, when the great
powers were deciding on the fate of the Balkan nations, the Albanian
League was formed in Prizren, on the periphery of ethnic Albanian living
space. The League called for the preservation of Ottoman Empire in its
entirety within the prewar boundaries and for the creation of autonomous
Albanian vilayet out of the vilayets of Kosovo, Scutari, Janina and
Monster (Bitolj), regions where ethnic Albanians accounted for 44% of
overall population. The territorial aspirations of the Albanian movement
as defined in 1878, became part of all subsequent national programs.
The new sultan Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) supported the League's pro-Ottoman
and pro-Islamic attitude. Breaking with the reformatory policy of his
predecessors, sultan adopted pan-Islamism as the ruling principle of
his reign. Unsatisfied with the decisions taken at the Congress, the
League put up an armed opposition to concession of regions of Plav and
Gusinje to Montenegro, and its detachments committed countless acts
of violence against the Serbs, whose very existence posed a permanent
threat to Albanian national interests. In 1881, Turkey employed force
to crush the League, whose radical wing was striving towards an independent
Albanian state to show that it was capable of implementing the adopted
reforms. Notwithstanding, under the system of Turkish rule in the Balkans,
ethnic Albanians continued to occupy the most prominent seats in the
decades to come.

Albanian National
Movement which developed by the end of the 19th c. had a role to unify
all territories in the Balkans where Albanians live in one state - the
Serbs were a greatest obstacle to this idea

The
ethnic Albanians' religious and ethnic intolerance of the Serbs took
on a new, political tone. The strategic objective of their national
policy was to systematically edge the Serbs out of these regions. The
sultan's policy of forming a chain of ethnic Albanian settlements to
secure a new border towards Serbia and to let ethnic Albanians, as advocates
of Islam, crush all unrest by Serbs and other Christians in the Empire's
European provinces, turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody battle-ground
in which the persecution of the Serbian populace assumed almost apocalyptic
proportions. From 1876 to 1883, approximately 1,500 Serbian families
fled Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of Albanian violence.5

Surrounded
by his influential guard of ethnic Albanians, the Abdulhamid II became
increasingly lenient toward Islamized Albanian tribes who used force
in quelling Christian movements: they were exempt from providing recruits,
paying the most of the regular taxes and allowed at times to refuse
the orders of local authorities. This lenient policy towards the ethnic
Albanians and tolerance for the violence committed against the Serbian
population created a feeling of superiority in the lower strata of Albanian
society. The knowledge that no matter what the offense they would not
be held responsible, encouraged ethnic Albanians to ignore all the lesser
authorities. Social stratification resulted on increasing number of
renegades who lived solely off banditry or as outlaws. The policy of
failing to punish ethnic Albanians led to total anarchy which, escaping
all control, increasingly worried the authorities in Constantinople.
Anarchy received fresh impetus at the end of the 19th century when Austria-Hungary,
seeking a way to expand towards the Bay of Salonika, encouraged ethnic
Albanians to clash with the Serbs and disobey the local authorities.
Ruling circles in Vienna saw the ethnic Albanians as a permanent wedge
between the two Serbian states and, with the collapse of the system
of Turkish rule, a bridge enabling the Dual Monarchy to extend in the
Vardar valley. Thus, Kosovo and Metohia became the hub of great power
confrontation for supremacy in the Balkans.

The
only protection for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia until the end of
1880s came from Russian diplomats, Russia being the traditional guardian
of the Orthodox and Slav population in the Ottoman Empire Russia's waning
influence in the Balkans following the Congress of Berlin had an unfavorable
impact on the Serbs in Turkey. Owing to Milan and Alexander Obrenovic's
Austrophile policy, Serbia lost valuable Russian support at the Porte
in its efforts to protect Serbian population In Kosovo and Metohia,
Serbs were regarded as a rebellious, treasonous element, every move
they made was carefully watched and any signs of rebellion were ruthlessly
punished. A military tribunal was established in Pristina in 1882 which
in its five years of work sent hundreds of national leaders to prison.

The
persistent efforts of Serbian officials to reach agreement with ethnic
Albanian tribal chiefs in Kosovo and Metohia, and thus help curb the
anarchy failed to stem the tide of violence. Belgrade officials did
not get a true picture of the persecutions until a Serbian consulate
was opened in Pristina in 1889, five centuries after a battle in Kosovo.
The government was informed that ethnic Albanians were systematically
mounting attacks on a isolated Serbian villages and driving people to
eriction with treats and murders: "Go to Serbia -you can't survive
here!". The assassination of the first Serbian Consul in the streets
of Pristina revealed the depth of ethnic Albanian intolerance. Until
1905, not a single Serbian diplomat from Pristina could visit the town
of Pec or tour Metohia, the hotbed of the anarchy. Consuls in Pristina
(who included the well-known writers Branislav Nusic and Milan M. Rakic)
wrote, aside to their regular reports, indepth descriptions of the situation
in Kosovo and Metohia. Serbia's sole diplomatic success was the election
of a Serbian candidate as the Raska-Prizren Metropolitan in 1896, following
a series of anti-Serbian orientated Greek Bishops who had been enthroned
in Prizren since 1830.

Outright
campaigns of terror were mounted after a Greaco-Turkish war in 1897,
when it appeared that the Serbs would suffer the same fate as the Armenians
in Asia Minor whom the Kurds had wiped out with blessing from the sultan.
Serbian diplomats launched a campaign at the Porte for the protection
of their compatriots, submitting extensive documentation on four hundred
crimes of murder, blackmail, theft, rape, seizure of land, arson of
churches. They demanded that energetic measures be taken against the
perpetrators and that the investigation be carried out by a joint Serbo-Turkish
committee. But, without the support of Russia, the whole effort came
to naught. The prime minister of Serbia observed with resignation that
60,000 people had fled Old Serbia for Serbia in the period from 1880
to 1889. In Belgrade, a Blue Book was printed for the 1899 Peace Conference
in the Hague, containing diplomatic correspondence on acts of violence
committed by ethnic Albanians in Old Serbia, but Austria-Hungary prevented
Serbian diplomats from raising the question before the international
public. In the ensuing years the Serbian government attempted to secretly
supply Serbs in Kosovo with arms. The first larger caches of guns were
discovered, and 190l saw another pogrom in Ibarski Kolasin (northern
Kosovo), which ended only when Russian diplomats intervened.6

The
widespread anarchy reached a critical point in 1902 when the Serbian
government with the support of Montenegrin diplomacy again raised the
issue of the protection of the Serbs in Turkey, demanding that the law
be applied equally to all subjects of Empire, and that an end be put
to the policy of indulging ethnic Albanians, that they be disarmed and
that Turkish garrisons be reinforced in areas with a mixed Serbian-ethnic
Albanian population. Russia, and then France, supported Serbia's demands.
The two most interested parties, Austria-Hungary and Russia, agreed
in 1897 to maintain the status quo in the Balkans, although they initiated
a reform plan to rearrange Turkey's European provinces. Fearing for
their privileges, ethnic Albanians launched a major uprising in 1903;
it began with new assaults against Serbs and ended with the assassination
of the newly appointed Russian consul in Mitrovica, accepted as a protector
of the Serbs in Kosovo.

The
1903 restoration of democracy in Serbia under new King Petar I Karadjordjevic
marked an end to Austrophile policy and the turning towards Russia.
In response, Austria-Hungary stepped up its propaganda efforts among
ethnic Albanians. At the request of the Dual Monarchy, Kosovo and Metohia
were exempt from the Great Powers Reform action (1903-1908). A new wave
of persecution ensued: in 1904,108 people fled for Serbia from Kosovo
alone. Out of 146 different cases of violence, 46 ended in murder; a
group of ethnic Albanians raped a seven-year-old girl. In 1905, out
of 281 registrated cases of violence, 65 were murders, and at just one
wedding, ethnic Albanians killed nine wedding guests.7

Vojvoda Misic
- a famous Serb general in the WW1

The
Young Turk revolution in 1908, which ended the "Age of Oppression"
(as Turkish historiography refers to the reign of Abdulhamid II), brought
no changes in relations between ethnic Albanians and Serbs. The Serbs'
first political organization was created under the auspices of the Young
Turk regime, but the ethnic Albanian revolt against the new authorities'
pan-Turkish policy triggered off a fresh wave of violence. In the second
half of 1911 alone, Old Serbia registrated 128 cases of theft, 35 acts
of arson, 41 instances of banditry, 53 cases of extortion, 30 instances
of blackmail, 19 cases of intimidation, 35 murders, 37 attempted murders,
58 armed attacks on property, 27 fights and cases of abuse, 13 attempts
at Islamization, and 18 cases of the infliction of serious bodily injury.
Approximately 400,000 people fled Old Serbia (Kosovo, Metohia, Raska,
northern and northwest Macedonia) for Serbia ahead of ethnic Albanian
and Turkish violence, and about 150,000 people fled Kosovo and Metohia,
a third of the overall Serbian population in these parts. Despite the
persecution and the steady outflow of people. Serbs still accounted
for almost half the population in Kosovo and Metohia in 1912. According
to Jovan Cvijic's findings, published in 1911, there were 14,048 Serbian
homes in Kosovo, 3, 826 in Pec and its environs, and 2,400 Serbian homes
with roughly 200,000 inhabitants in the Prizren region. Comparing this
statistics dating from the middle of the century, when there were approximately
400,000 Serbs living in Kosovo and Metohia, Cvijic's estimate that by
1912 about 150,000 refugees had fled to Serbia seems quite acceptable.8

The
Serbian and Montenegrin governments aided the ethnic Albanian rebels
against Young Turks up to a point: they took in refugees and gave them
arms with a view to undermining Turkish rule in the Balkans, dispelling
Austro-Hungarian influence on their leaders and curbing the violence
against Serbs. But it was all in vain as intolerance for the Serbs ran
deep in all Albanian national movements. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria
and Greece realized that the issue of Christian survival in Turkey had
to be resolved by arms. Since Turkey refused to guarantee the Christians
the same rights it had promised the ethnic Albanian insurgents, the
Balkan allies declared war in the fall of 1912.